Subjects Archives: Strategy

NARENDRA Modi said the other day, rather disparagingly, that the “Urban Naxals” live in air-conditioned comfort. Since all who speak or write in public upholding the right to dissent from the Hindutva positions, including even known critics of the Left, which means virtually all members of the intelligentsia who display any integrity, have been dubbed “Urban Naxals” by his government, his remark in effect amounts to targeting the entire intelligentsia.

In 2018, Cambridge Analytica, the data mining and analytics company, dominated the news about political campaigning and data. But they are not alone in using personal data for political influence. Since we began actively documenting this industry, our global list has expanded to 329 organisations, and it is still growing.

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” —Malcolm X

Red Flag editor Ben Hillier speaks with Lance Selfa, author of The Democrats: A Critical History and editor of the essay collection U.S. Politics in an Age of Uncertainty, about the meaning of the midterm election results and what comes next.

AT THE BEGINNING of October, Amazon was quietly issued a patent that would allow its virtual assistant Alexa to decipher a user’s physical characteristics and emotional state based on their voice. Characteristics, or “voice features,” like language accent, ethnic origin, emotion, gender, age, and background noise would be immediately extracted and tagged to the user’s data file to help deliver more targeted advertising.

Since the 2016 elections, corporate media narratives about U.S. politics have fixated on the “white working class” as a pivotal demographic, presented as a hardscrabble assortment of disaffected outsiders.

How can politics be a way of pursuing the same goals once pursued in war? And through what form of politics? The career of Pasang, from revolutionary military commander to Vice President of Nepal, raises a host of questions about the transition from war to politics and the conditions of victory in each sphere.

MintPress News reports from the migrant caravan in Mexico City and met with members of the International Migrants Alliance, who gathered under the slogan: “Migrants, refugees and peoples of the world unite and fight capitalist exploitation, plunder and war!”

Sitting in his office, Donald Trump meets with the head of his economic advisors Gary Cohn. Cohn jokes with Trump. He says, make a speech and say that the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border is ready to be built: the materials are on hand, labour is eager. The only thing that engineers are worrying about is how to spell–over the 2000-kilometre border–the word TRUMP.

Social movements and political opposition fear Temer’s security decree will be used to persecute left-wing groups.

We need individuals and social movements willing to disturb the normalization of a fascist politics, oppose racist, sexist, and neoliberal orthodoxy.

Mike Peters explores the legacy of Steve Biko, a radical who spent his life fighting for Black liberation and for the overthrow of the Apartheid government in South Africa.

“More countries must rapidly follow the path of Wales in leaving fossil fuels in the ground and transitioning to renewables.”

FAR-RIGHT Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro’s son has threatened violence against the country’s Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) if it blocks his father from running in Sunday’s second-round poll.

Sivamohan Valluvan and Eleanor Penny unpack neoliberal attitudes to migration and ‘low-value’ humans.

Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development.

There is a famous old left phrase, ‘socialism or barbarism’: there is no choice but to find a way to stop capitalism’s destructive logic, because if left unchecked it will create catastrophe.

Leaked document details BusinessEurope’s campaign to undermine EU attempts to cut climate emissions.

War is romantic only when it is limited to the confines of a sanitized imagination. Movies that portray heroic soldiers vanquishing demonic enemy combatants or rescuing fallen comrades may whip up jingoistic war fever, but horrific images of real children and elders maimed, scarred, dismembered and killed during armed conflicts have the power to end wars.

International financial transactions using foreign currency were reportedly blocked, agroindustrial and pharmaceutical sectors said.